Down to the Pashtun Tribal Lands in Search of Bin Laden’s Base.

Today I just flew in from the Iran-facing frontier western city of Herat,a beautiful town located on the other side of the Hindu Kush Mountainsthat is inhabited by friendly Persian speaking Afghans. While there I wasreminded of the fact that Afghanistan is about as homogenous asmulti-ethnic Switzerland. But no group dominates Afghanistan like thePashtuns. It was Pasthuns from the south who also forged themilitant-fundamentalist Taliban movement in the mid-1990s and protectedBin Laden.

Click here to see the running photo gallery I have experienced something of the Pasthun-Taliban’s struggle toregain power. Yesterday I made my way down to an embattled outpostlocated deep in the Pasthun tribal territories on the Pakistaniborder in a place called Gardez. As I arrived in this high risk zoneI drove past a base where soldiers were cleaning up the remains of asuicide bombing the night before. My host at the base explained thathis position regularly gets shelled by Taliban operating in the area. And such terrorism is not limited to the unstable Pashtun provinces.A suicide bombing close enough to our compound shook the walls andreminded everyone there that the Taliban consider Kabul to be theirnumber three terrorist target. I was also witness to a Taliban urbanshooting which resulted in three policemen being shot on the streetbelow my balcony. This sort of terrorism drives home the fact thatKabul is amere thirty miles from fighting between the Taliban and Coalition troops. It is my need to understand the source of this increasinglydangerous Taliban insurgency that has driven me down through the adangerous pass to the Pashtuns’ main border town in the tribalareas facing Pakistan, Jalalabad. The journey to Jalalabad is onethat is replete with history. As we left the plain of Kabul we entered a narrow gorge flankedby dagger-like peaks. It was in the depths of this seeminglyendless pass (it took my driver 3 hours to wind his way through it) that an invadingBritish army was annihilated by Afghan-Pasthun tribesmen in 1842. Onlyone survivor escaped the slaughter of the 16,000 man British army andmade it to the British garrison at Jalalabad. Happily I experience no such Pashtun-tribal attacks on this road and,on the contrary, decided that it was not Taliban suicide bombers thatscared me but Afghan suicide drivers. Having gained a grey hair or two coming through the mountains downto Jalalabad, I noticed groups of Pashtun Kuchi nomads on the sideof the road. These colorful tribesmen are one of the world’s last great nomadicpeoples. They roam the countryside with their camels, sheep, and goatsliving in tents. I decided to stop into one of their encampments to say hiand they curiously asked where I was from. When I told them America I wasamazed to hear that they’d never heard of it. Finally one elderly Kuchichieftain nodded wisely and said ‘Ingliz’(English) to which I nodded inaffirmative (although my Welsh family will disown me if they find out Iadmitted to being an Englishman!). Hearing the name of the famous Ingliz,several children mimicked shooting and pointed to the pass letting me knowthat the memory of Britain’s greatest defeat still resonates with theisolated Kuchi Pashtuns. But as I stared up at the snow capped mountains of Tora Bora in thedistance, I realized that not all Pashtuns were as concerned about 19thcentury defeats. After wandering Jalalabad’s bustling markets I made wayout to the countryside in search of the site of a more recent defeat, BinLaden’s destroyed compound at Darunta. It was in Darunta that Al Qaedaexperimented with weapons of mass destruction and plotted the 9/11 attackon the USA. But as I asked local Pasthun villagers where the bombed out ruins ofBin Laden’s infamous camp were they became visibly angry. As agathering crowd grew increasingly hostile, my driver sped away.Fortunately some local children were eager to assist me and took meout of the village to a ruined compound that had been thoroughly looted since it was destroyed byUS bombs in October 2001. There was little remaining at this site toindicate that one of the decisive acts in modern history had been plannedhere. And considering the attitude of the local Pashtuns, this was perhapsjust as well for it might have been converted into a shrine. While I have gained increased respect for the Afghans on thismonth-long journey, I remind myself that things can turn dangerous inthis land in a moment. Its now time to head out into the provinceswhere I will have no access to email and I will keep this rule inmind. My next blog will come from India inshallah (‘God willing’ asthe Afghans say before setting out any dangerous enterprise). If allgoes well I will then make a long-dreamed of pilgrimage to the Taj Mahal, the greatest architecturallegacy of Babur’s heirs and send out my final blog from there. For anarticle on the disturbing weapons of mass destruction experiments carriedout at Darunta see:http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/08/19/terror.tape.chemical/Also see my article on suicide bombings: “Cheney Attack Reveals TalibanSuicide Bomber Targeting Patterns” Terrorism Monitor, Feb. 2007.

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